Sunday, January 9, 2011, marked a milestone in my professional acting career -- performing Off-Broadway -- in Alan Bowne's BEIRUT. I perform again Sunday, January 16, 2011 at 3pm. (Click here to purchase a ticket.) And for those of you who like to ask "what's the show about?" I offer you this teaser.
Not only am I performer in the piece, I manage the show's social media presence on Twitter. As such, I am always looking for goodies (pics, reviews, etc.) that I can tweet to raise awareness about the show. The show is great and the actors are great in it, but it is always a challenge to get butts in seats. Especially agent butts and casting director butts.
Production provided me with photos of the set and for my purposes they worked just fine:
I linked to one of the images in a tweet:
>> Our set looks even more amazing in person. http://ow.ly/i/7anI Tickets: http://ow.ly/3CwgA #theater #nyc #broadway #nowplaying <<
And I continued the search for things to tweet.
Then, low-and-behold, I hit the "jackpot": The MALE NUDITY IN NEW YORK STAGE blog. They rate shows on a zero to five scale: zero equal to "No nudity at all" (sic) and five equal to "Gratuitous nudity! A must see!" (sic). BEIRUT was named in their January 9, 2010 "Play with possible nudity: Beirut" post. (Note: I did not hyperlink to the blog due to its adult content.)
This, my friends, is what marketers call "an opportunity."
I remember the saying: "There's a lid for every pot." Apparently there are theatergoers who want to attend shows so they can see naked "boy parts." And that's okay.
Butts in seats.
But how to market the show to this niche? Therein lies the rub. Then -- light bulb.
I went back to this blog and added the below comment:
> On your 0 to 5 scale, please know that BEIRUT scores a 4. < [This is TRUE. This production does come with a MATURE CONTENT warning.]
Let's see what happens.
(Oh, to answer your unasked question: No.)
- Russell
